Researchers in Germany have invented a new hack that can allow someone to break the encryption of PDF files and access their content — or even forge signed PDF files under certain circumstances.
A team from Ruhr University Bochum, FH Münster University of Applied Sciences and Hackmanit GmbH developed the attack, called PDFex, that can allow an attacker to view the content of a PDF file without the public key or password encrypting it.
The team published a report online detailing the attack, which encompasses two main techniques — one that can break PDF encryption and one that can break PDF signatures.
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